They also found that one hour of exposure to mobile phone radiation caused cultured human cells to shrink. The researchers believe this is triggered by a response that normally only happens when a cell is damaged. In a person, such changes could disable safety mechanisms that prevent harmful substances from entering the brain from the bloodstream. Radiation-induced changes in the cells could also interfere with the normal death process of apoptosis. If cells that are "marked" to die do not, tumors can form. The study found that a protein called hsp27 linked to the functioning of the blood-brain barrier showed increased activity due to irradiation and pointed to a possibility that such activity could make the shield more permeable, he said. Increased protein activity might cause cells to shrink--not the blood vessels but the cells themselves--and then tiny gaps could appear between those cells through which some molecules could pass.

The WHO's Interphone investigation's results showed "a significantly increased risk of some brain tumors related to use of mobile phones for a period of ten years or more," the Telegraph reported. The study showed participants in the study who used a cell phones for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. To date, there have been no long-term studies on the effects of cell phone usage among children.The $100 billion a year mobile phone industry had previously asserted that there is no conclusive evidence of harmful effects as a result of electromagnetic radiation, but in response to a number of studies revealing the dangers of cell phones, the industry now advises consumers to hold the devices away from their bodies. About 650 million mobile phones are expected to be sold to consumers this year, and over 3.3 billion people around the world use one.

Radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA in laboratory conditions, according to a new study majority-funded by the European Union, researchers said on Monday, December 20, 2004.The so-called Reflex study, conducted by 12 research groups in seven European countries, did not prove that mobile phones are a risk to health but concluded that more research is needed to see if effects can also be found outside a lab.

The United Nations' health agency, the World Health Organization, now lists mobile phone use in the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform. But no adverse health effects have been established, the agency explains. The decision to list cell phones as a cancer hazard came after a team of 31 scientists from 14 countries examined peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety.T"The biggest problem we have is that we know most environmental factors take several decades of exposure before we really see the consequences," said Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

THE "NATURAL" AQUATIC WORLD
The aquatic world is not quiet. There are numerous sources of sound that present a background of noise that humans encounter in the terrestrial environment. Sounds of the aquatic environment come from abiotic and biotic sources. Abiotic sources might include movement of water across a coral reef, geologic events, waves hitting a shore, and raindrops on the water surface. Biotic sources include fish, whales and invertebrates (snapping shrimp possibly being the most ubiquitous source of background biotic noise in many parts of the world). Many of these organisms produce sounds to communicate over short and long distances with mates, offspring and other con-specifics, or to find prey and identify other objects of interest using echolocation.

However, we are also beginning to realize that communication between individuals or groups of animals is certainly not the only role for sounds. As Bregman (1990) points out, the world abounds with sound and animals use sound to glean a great deal of information about their environment.Therefore, an animal that has a sense of sight can develop a "visual scene" of its world. However, this scene is limited to relatively short distances (depending on envi-ronmental clarity and brightness) and is within the visual field of the receptors. The auditory scene, however, might extend much further than the visual scene and provides animals with a very broad "view" of their world.The source of information in the auditory scene...

The source of information in the auditory scene is potentially very extensive. Instead of being limited to sounds of conspecifics, the auditory scene might include sounds made by other species (the idea of "interception" that was introduced by Myrberg [1980]) as well as en-vironmental sounds such as raindrops on the water sur-face, the sounds of a reef, and geologic sources. All of these sounds potentially serve to "inform" an organism about its world. Indeed, the idea of the auditory scene is not limited to the marine environment but is just as relevant to animals on land or in the air. (It has been suggested that some birds migrate using infrasound produced by winds moving over geologic features [e.g. Hagstrum 2001].) And humans constantly make use of the auditory scene in their daily lives, even if they are only aware of many of these sounds when the sounds change or there is a sudden new sound in the environment (e.g. the siren of a fire engine or the cry of a baby).

At this point, however, it is nearly impossible to extrapolate from results with one sound source, one fish species, or even fish of one size to other sources, species, or fish sizes. The present paper briefly discusses the potential effects of sound on fish, describes some of the more recent well-controlled experimental studies, and points out areas for future study that will be needed before a real understanding of the effects of sound on fish can be developed.

In what follows, we revise the key concepts regarding the eukaryotic gene and genome structure needed to understand the annotation of genomes. In this context, annotation refers to the description and location of genes and other biologically relevant features of a genomic sequence. Our main goal is to fully comprehend what genome annotation projects offer and, just as important, what they do not yet provide.

In this regard, it's worth noting that current gene prediction programs, among other bioinformatics tools, systematically ignore the complexity of eukaryotic gene structure. Diversity comes from alternatively spliced genes, non-canonical signals (that affect either splicing or translation) and from regions that control gene transcription, promoters, which are not yet well understood. Here, we give and overview to see some of the limitations and future directions in the gene prediction field.